A Strange Tale from Finland
And, actually, written by a Norwegian, Roy Jacobsen. It’s a novel called, in English translation, “The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles” set in WWII in the Finnish Winter, when the inhabitants of a small town set fire to it and leave, to prevent the invading Russians from using it as a base. The hero is a faux-simple man who stays on, collects together the rag-tag of rejects and hopeless cases from the Russian Army to form a group of loggers – and together they survive the bitter weather and the Finnish victory over the Russians. It has an allegorical feel – must read it again. Roy Jacobsen is wery well known and respected in Norway, I’m told. It’s a great pity this is his only book in translation. Bits of it reminded me of Hamsun’s simple farmer characters in”The growth of the Soil”.